“You’re not okay though. Are you?”
She took a shaky breath. “No. Not entirely. Hearing about that day, having it thrown in my face...” She looked down at her hands. “It still hurts, Jacob. Knowing what you did. Who you were. It probably always will hurt, a little.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words completely inadequate. “I’m so fucking sorry—”
“I know you are.” She looked up at me, and I saw the complexity in her expression—hurt and strength, vulnerability and power, all existing at once. “And I meant what I said to her. That was your rock bottom. The moment that made you change. But that doesn’t erase what it cost you and me to get you there.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“But I’m choosing to build something new with you anyway.” Her hands stopped shaking, and something fierce entered her expression again. “And I’ll be damned if I let some club girl make me feel like I’m not enough. I am enough. I’ve always been enough. You just didn’t know it then.”
“I know it now.”
She smiled, and this time it reached her eyes. “Yeah, you do. And watching you stand there and let me handle it? Not trying to protect her, not trying to minimize what happened this time? That meant something.”
From across the parking lot, I heard Handful’s voice: “Holy shit, Dutch. Your woman just destroyed Crystal without breaking a sweat.”
“Yeah, she did,” I called back, not taking my eyes off Indira. “And it was fucking beautiful.”
Indira laughed, a real laugh that made my dick hard. Fuck, I missed hearing that laugh.
“Go on,” she said, squeezing my hand before letting go. “I need to finish my errands. But Jacob, next time a woman from your past tries to cause drama, just step back and let me handle it. I’m much better at female psychological warfare than you are.”
I watched her walk back toward her car, and caught sight of my brothers’ faces across the lot. They looked stunned, impressed, and maybe a little scared.
Good. They should be. Because that woman wasn’t just beautiful and smart and fierce.
She was mine. And God help anyone who tried to suggest otherwise.
?
Later that evening, I was at the clubhouse going over the week’s receipts when my phone buzzed with Glitch’s name.
“What’s up, brother?”
“Got something you should know about.” Glitch’s voice was careful, the way it always got when he was working through information. “Remember that burner number I flagged a few months back? The one connected to the Wolves?”
I set down my pen. “Yeah.”
“Got a hit on it tonight. Incoming call from Crystal’s cell.”
Glitch had been keeping quiet tabs on Crystal’s movements ever since Indira came back—nothing invasive, just monitoring her phone activity for exactly this kind of bullshit. I hadn’t asked him to do it. He’d just started, and when I’d found out, I’d asked him why.
“Don’t know,” he’d admitted. “Just a gut feeling. The way she looked at you after you cut her off—that wasn’t wounded pride, brother. That was something uglier. And now your girl’s back in town?” He’d shrugged. “Seemed worth watching.”
I’d learned a long time ago to trust Glitch’s instincts. Smart move, apparently.
Handful, who’d been nursing a beer at the bar, wandered into my office. I held up a finger.
“Glitch, you’re on speaker now. Say that again for Handful.”
“Crystal called a burner phone about an hour ago. The burner’s registered to a tower near Wolves territory—same one their VP uses.”
Handful’s eyebrows shot up.
“How long was the call?” I asked.
“Eight minutes. Long enough to run her mouth about something, but I couldn’t get audio.”
